The Adventure of Faith

The U.S. has been in the forefront of mission work and kingdom building so long that we are not used to looking elsewhere for how best to see God move in the U.S. Yet today, while the church is expanding rapidly in so many places around the globe, in the U.S. we are standing still…at best. When we see how and why the church is growing so rapidly around the world, our natural instinct is to say, “Yea, but can it happen here?”

I believe that response (one of which I too am guilty), has more to do with the radical shift we would have to make here in the U.S. to see a similar movement. We are talking about a radical shift from some old wineskins of which we have grown accustomed, to some new, lighter, more flexible wineskins to hold the new wine God desires to pour out on us.

In his book, Church Planting Movements, David Garrison surveys what God is doing around the world and then comes up with 10 Essentials in Every Church Planting Movement, 10 Factors in Most Church Planting Movements, and the 7 Deadly Sins that would impede movement. For this blog I want to list out the 10 Essentials for people to ponder. How is your church doing in these areas? Do you think this would work in the U.S.? The top 10 are:

1. Extraordinary Prayer

2. Abundant Evangelism

3. Intentional Planting of Reproducing Churches

4. The Authority of God’s Word

5. Local Leadership

6. Lay Leadership

7. House Churches

8. Churches Planting Churches

9. Rapid Reproduction

10. Healthy Churches

Can these things happen here? Mmmmnnn…extraordinary prayer…abundant evangelism…lay leadership…local leadership…house churches…churches planting churches…I say WHY NOT! I have to admit we are not used to a lot of these…but they are right out of the Book of Acts. I think that describes the first century church quite well. I for one, want to see it here.

About

My name is David Gschwend and I have been journeying with Jesus since 1971. He had been pursuing me a lot longer than that, but it was my senior year in high school that I finally decided to start following him. After graduating from college I taught high school biology and chemistry for four years. After that, I worked in the electrical industry in testing and troubleshooting high, medium and low voltage power equipment. Finally in 1989 my journey took me into the pastoral ministry. After 16 years serving in traditional churches Jesus led me in June 2006 to begin a movement of networks of reproducing house churches from San Jose to Monterey, CA (www.gatheringbythebay.org). This has been the craziest part of the journey so far!